In Praise of Hubby

After 12 years of marriage I finally discovered why anniversaries exist. You may want to print this out and give it to your spouse or significant other. Anniversaries exist so your spouse has the opportunity to do something so nice for you that you forget about all the boneheaded, lame stuff he did the year before. Seriously. I am not married to a man prone to romantic pronouncements.

This fact has been demonstrated to its fullest in what I call the Precious Moments - Not, video episode. Hubby's Mom went to the mother ship of Precious Moments in Missouri. She brought back a video of the fountain show. At the end of said fountain show, a pinpoint of light in the center of the screen grows and grows until it is a giant Jesus with outstretched arms. The experience of seeing the fountain show live in the Precious Moments chappel was something very special and moving to Hubby's mom. She wanted to share this experience with us. We sat and watched the show. When giant Jesus appeared, Hubby's comment was, "I saw a show on The Learning Channel and Jesus didn't look like that. That Jesus is a Greco-Roman interpretation of what Jesus looked like." Hubby's Mom just stared at him through the tears as if he had two heads. Hubby scores pretty low on the feeling end of the spectrum, while his mom scores pretty high on the feeling end of the spectrum.

So, it was with a bit of fear that I sat and listened to Hubby's grand plan for our anniversary celebration. I might be taking a trip to NASA. Then hubby uttered those words that struck fear in my heart, "I have reserved a rustic cabin for us in Hocking Hills." Rustic. Cabin. I have seen rustic. Rustic means no running water indoors. Rustic means limited electricity. Rustic means no cable and no internet. Rustic and city boy hubby. I was afraid. No. I was terrified. I phoned my mom and told her of my fears of spending the weekend in Deliverance country. She agreed that it would be best to keep those fears to myself.

On Friday, after work we set out for Rustic Cabin. I was glad to get away as the worst of tax season was officially over and I needed some down time. We got off I-71 south of Columbus in the late evening. By the time we got to Rustic Cabin vicinity, it was dark. Driving in the country in the dark is so much fun. We pulled up to this farm house and I had a silent, personal moment of angst as Hubby went to get the key to our "secluded, rustic cabin". I was preparing myself to say all the right things when we pulled up to a glorified shack complete with outhouse and hand pump.

Then I saw it. It was a cabin - a nice cabin with no outhouse, no hand pump, and no creek with buckets to facilitate water hauling. There was a very, very nice hot tub on the deck. I exhaled. This was good. Of course we had to verify that the hot tub did, in fact, work, and did, in fact, contain hot water before we retired for the evening.

Ahh, I could feel my sock knitting mojo recuperating and gaining strength with each long soak. Toe up got out of time out. I read my book. I soaked in a hot tub under the stars. Life can be very, very good and very, very relaxing. Most of all, Hubby can do something so incredibly wonderful that I wonder why I ever thought 12 years sounded like a prison sentence.

Sometimes being unplugged from every electronic device is what you need to make it. It is amazing how little time you need - 48 hours in the woods, in a cabin with a hot tub. Maybe it isn't brain cancer from our cell phones we have to worry about killing us. Maybe, just maybe it's that gerbil wheel most of us are running on - fueled by Starbucks, Google and exhaust fumes.